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The author G.K. Chesterton, one of Kensington and Chelsea’s more notable and original localists (see ‘The Napoleon of Notting Hill’), once noted that, ‘When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude.’ When it comes to the everyday functions of local authorities and how […]
Liz Truss entered office facing the fiercest economic headwinds in living memory, with rising inflation, inexorable increases in energy, labour market bottlenecks and plummeting consumer confidence. As the calendar would have it, 100th day will come to pass on 15 December in the middle of the Christmas shopping season which threatens to break a retail […]
We will not see her like again. As the nation enters a ten-day period of national mourning, the detailed, long-term planning for Operation London Bridge smoothly meshes together. With all this going on at the national stage, the local and personal impact of our longest-serving monarch continues to reverberate in hearts and memories in all […]
The policies announced in today’s Queen’s Speech are designed to do three things. In reverse order of national importance these are: to provide some red meat for a weary and irritated party base; to chart a path to prosperity which might unite a kingdom which appears, after last week’s local elections, to be more divided […]
Since it was elected in 2019, the government has declared two key ambitions. Firstly, a more economically balanced country, underscored by the rebranding of the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, and the Levelling Up White Paper. And secondly, tackling climate change as the UK became the first major economy to set a legally […]
The white paper recognises that a “strong planning system is vital for levelling up communities”, yet it dedicates just over one page (page 227) out of nearly 300 to planning reform, with under ten references throughout the document to land-use or spatial planning. Even then, it simply repeats what we already know about the commitment […]
The Levelling Up White Paper filled a void by dint of its very existence, with the concept of levelling up having been loosely and amorphously defined on the fly ever since it played its role in the landslide Conservative victory of 2019. This analysis looks at the white paper from various angles, aiming to build […]
The pandemic has shown how good quality housing is central to public health. Access to private outdoor space, green public open space, natural light, and good insulation, are all things that have been vital to our mental and physical health. The frequent lockdowns during the last two years shone a light on the stark inequality […]
For many who are waiting to burst through the finishing line of 2021, news that the devo ball has been kicked into the longer grass of January 2022 brings a contented sigh of relief. We can catch up with all this big screen strategy stuff refreshed from the Christmas holidays. Hurray. However, on Monday there […]
In the well-reviewed recent popular anthropology book The Dawn of Everything, the authors, David Graeber and David Wengrow, posit that the “ultimate question of human history is not our equal access to material resources… but our equal capacity to contribute to decisions about how to live together”. This, they suggest, implies there should be something meaningful […]